Glamour, Interrupted: How I Became the Best-Dressed Patient in Hollywood

By Steven Cojocaru

Before Steven Cojocaru was diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease, he could never have imagined himself living anything other than a high-glam Hollywood lifestyle. A bon vivant on two coasts, he held jobs as both the red carpet guru for Entertainment Tonight and the fashion correspondent for the Today show, hauling his suitcase full of flat irons and designer boots from New York to Los Angeles and back again, every week. He was Cojo, professional glamour boy with a barbed tongue who went shopping with J.Lo and traded fashion tips with Gwyneth.

But a painful and ironically unglamorous reality would begin to form itself around his life, and Cojo found himself with a new Rolodex of A-List friends: The kidney team at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

In a memoir that moves beyond the celebrity, Glamour, Interrupted is an inspiring and darkly humorous story about how, in the midst of a world obsessed with youth and beauty, Cojo survived what turned out to be the fight of his life. From drug-induced meltdowns to waking up in the hospital on life support, Cojo recounts his desperate hunt for a new kidney—after a failed transplant and months of dialysis—that ended with a twist of fate and forged an even stronger bond with his mother.

With a bit of eye cream, a little concealer, and just a touch of bronzer, he found a strength he didn't know he had, and used his unfaltering sense of humor to help him survive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Oct 13, 2009
• ISBN: 9780061744259

Steven Cojocaru

Steven Cojocaru is a red carpet fixture as the fashion and celebrity correspondent for Entertainment Tonight and The Insider. He is also the author of the best-selling Red Carpet Diaries: Confessions of a Glamour Boy. He lives in Los Angeles.

Book preview

Preface

Sarah Jessica Parker is inconsolable. Paramedics have rushed in to tranquilize a hysterical Jennifer Aniston. Charlize has fainted…but that could just be because her rib-crushing Dior crystal bustier is blocking her airway passages. Mischa and Demi get mascara touch-ups in between sobs.

It’s my Hollywood memorial service, darling, and it’s the social event of all eternity. Outside the Beverly Hills Hotel, a pale beauty with flaxen hair wearing a Marni mini and Stella McCartney tofu wedges is pleading with the head of security. "But I’m on the list," she says, exasperated. Would you check one more time? Paltrow. P-A-L-T-R-O-W.

It’s back to back on the steamy sun-soaked red carpet. Renée Zellweger, in a gunmetal strapless Prada, has accidentally stepped on the train of Halle Berry’s aubergine couture mourning gown by Giorgio Armani Privé. Above the din of shrieking fans, barking photographers, and a tearful Mary J. Blige serenading the crowd with an a capella version of La Vie en Rose, a sign pulled by a small aircraft sums up the general mood. Up in the sky, it drags a banner: WE’LL MISS YOU, COJO.

By the hotel pool, Bolshoi Ballet dancers in tights and codpieces offer mimosas and antidepressants to the guests. A Cirque du Soleil troupe is doing an underwater interpretive dance, a wet homage to moi, entitled Cojó: La Poulet de la Mer. Donatella Versace sweeps in wearing an aqua leather jumpsuit and a mourning veil (from Versace’s upcoming Resort Collection); behind her, her minions roll a portable Thermage skin tightening machine. Dignitaries continue to flood in: Maya Angelou, Queen Paola of Belgium, Queen Latifah, Sir Paul McCartney, Fiona Swarovski, Ralph and Ricky Lauren, and of course, Harvey.

The service hasn’t even begun yet, and already the caterers have run out of wasabi-mint crab cakes. Josh Groban is at the piano singing his melancholy heart out, and DJ VICE is setting up his turntables for the post-service dance party. Chairs have been set up around the pool, where Nelson Mandela and Hilary Duff are madly digging through the goodie bags, each one stuffed with a 35cm Black Clemence Hermès Birkin, a Cartier La Doña watch, a lifetime supply of Yves Saint Laurent False Lash Effect mascara, a Chanel bikini made entirely of leaves from Karl Lagerfeld’s garden, and a gift certificate from my dentist offering a full set of upper veneers.

In the front row sits my entire entourage: My devoted dermatologist, six hairdressers, three makeup artists, my live-in colorist, personal chef, eyebrow shaper, meditation coach, and my cardio striptease and solar-power yoga instructors. They cling to each other for solace as the celebrities take seats around them.

The music is cued. Bono, clearing his throat, walks to the front of the stage. Julia Roberts shuts off her iPod, Oprah lights a candle, and the whole place goes respectfully silent.

A gong shatters the silence. It’s Jennifer Lopez on an elephant, wearing traditional Balinese mourning robes and Graff diamond door-knocker earrings with Burmese rubies. She’s followed by a trio of monks banging cymbals and little girls throwing frangipangi petals. Sorry for being late! Have the eulogies started yet? she calls out, blowing kisses at the crowd.

She stands on the elephant and balances on one foot, preparing to perform an ancient ritualized Hindu reincarnation dance. Suddenly, the elephant smells a stolen crab cake stuffed in Steven Spielberg’s pocket and lunges for it. J. Lo careens backward. She is sent flying and plunges into the pool, her clip-on hair extensions floating on the surface of the water behind her…

…My eyes open. I am alone in a dingy hospital room, staring blankly at the ceiling. Instead of elegant sobs, all I can hear is the beeping of the heart monitor and the steady drip of the IV. The anesthesia is wearing off and I’m in a foggy state, trying to piece things together, only to come to the horrible realization that my new kidney—after her tragically brief six month stint in my body—has just been removed, along with a chunk of my soul. The raw truth that the surgery of the night before wasn’t a dream after all makes my stomach churn.

My body may have rejected the kidney, but my mind is rejecting a future as a prisoner chained to a machine to stay alive. I am facing a future of disease and dialysis. I feel like my life has been carjacked.

CHAPTER 1

If My Kidney Had Handles,

It Would Be a Marc Jacobs Bag

Are you wearing eyelash extensions?"

I’m in the middle of one of my signature probing interviews, and sitting across from me is Jude Law and his hypnotically azure orbs. I’ve already told him that he looks like something out of Old Hollywood, shrieking: You’re the new Errol Flynn, so retro, swashbuckling matinee idol! But he isn’t the slightest bit amused by my interviewing style.

Um, eyelashes? I don’t understand?

You have the most beautiful eyelashes I’ve ever seen, I continue. "I have eyelash envy. They can’t possibly be real: They are the eyelashes of Aphrodite."

I thought we were going to talk about my new movie, Jude says, his face slowly turning red.

"OK—why don’t you tell me about your eyelashes in the movie, then."

Jude and I are sitting in a suite in the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, with two cameras trained on our faces. Off-camera, a production assistant is on duty, holding my Gatorade at the ready with a straw in it so that I don’t smudge my hydrating lip balm. My T-shirt has been embroidered with a skull of purple antique Austrian crystals left over from the Ottoman Empire. My superskinny jeans are so tight I’m beginning to sound like Jamie Lynn Spears.

But such are the supreme sacrifices one makes when you are Cojo, Professional Featherweight. It is 2004, and my life in Hollywood is fraught with special complications. My personal spray tanner keeps getting called away on emergency because Mariah’s elbows have smeared. Linds at the Chateau has stolen my hairdresser, and I’m dying for a blowout. I have to send threats to Will and Jada, warning them that if they don’t stop hogging our car detailer, I’m going to put them on my Worst Dressed List.

I think I live a life of high drama, but I have no idea.

When you are a member in good standing of the Professional Gadflies of America Association—PGAA for short—you are bound by strict rules. You must go to at least five parties a week (check). You can’t sleep in your own bed for more than ten nights in a row (check). Your tailor is British, your cobbler is Italian, and you fly to Zurich to get your black market sheep-cell face-rejuvenating shots (check).

Growing up in the suburbs of Montreal, I had been a glam-obsessed junior fashionista: I kept my eyes glued to all three channels on our television, devouring every image delivered from the red carpet. It was a parallel universe, and by the age of six or seven I knew the difference between a one-shoulder, a halter and a scoop neck. When I was invited to a friend’s house and instructed to Go play trains with Jeremy, I would instead dart upstairs to the mother’s closet hoping to play with yards of carpet-dragging tulle and chiffon.

In Montreal, the most legendary fashion editor was Iona Monahan of the Montreal Gazette. The picture on her column showed her in a chignon and oversized glasses for theatrical flair: To me, she was larger than life, and terrifying, sort of a Canuck Anna Wintour. I was writing in my spare time. My English teacher had really encouraged me to develop my talents, and by the age of sixteen, I knew I wanted to write about fashion. Ms. Monahan was the only game in town, so I cold-called her to introduce myself. I never expected her to answer her own phone, and when she did, with her gruff Lauren Bacall voice, I stammered out how I was Montreal’s biggest fashion fan. I suggested that she start covering men’s fashion and toiletries. Why don’t I do a survey of local celebrities—radio jocks, sports figures—and ask them their favorite colognes? I asked.

After concluding that the vast majority of Montreal males enjoyed dousing themselves with Drakkar Noir, a petit career was born. I didn’t even have my driver’s learning permit, but soon I was writing about fashion and everything glam for a top Canadian fashion magazine. By my early 20s, a raw, primitive version of Cojo had emerged, making waves in journalism and hitting every party in Montreal that wasn’t canceled due to a snow storm. But I knew that print wouldn’t be able to contain me: I was going to be a television talk show superstar, and eventually have my line of hair gels and loofah sponges.

Somehow, accidentally, I segued into doing public relations for the Just For Laughs Comedy festival, where comics from all over the world—especially Hollywood—perform. Through the festival I met a young Hollywood couple, agent Steve Levine and his singer wife Linda. They saw something in me that even I didn’t, and kept encouraging me to move to Los Angeles to try my hand at my dream of being on TV. In the early 1990s, to their chagrin, shock, and amazement, I finally did. I packed up my collection of barrettes and moved to Los Angeles, a city whose denizens I just knew were panting for the opportunity to hear my opinions on such matters as sequinned sheaths and silky column dresses. I arrived on Steve and Linda’s doorstep, and asked them to be my adopted family. Luckily, they didn’t slam the door in my face.

The Levines were my shock absorbers. But besides them I was all alone. I starved, working as a temp at Disney, spritzing Opium cologne at Robinson’s May, and working as a personal assistant for a publicist who had me hand-plucking the coarse hair from her chin. I was beginning to realize that my looks could only take me as far as…nowhere. Being a trophy boy was probably not in the cards for me. But my Hollywood dream was still alive.

Everything changed when I began to write freelance about celebrity fashion for People magazine’s Style Watch column. Style Watch was only half a page and it didn’t even have my name on it—I was just a contributor. But eventually I climbed my way up the People ladder: As celebrity fashion grew more popular, I was granted a full bylined column.

And then, finally, it happened. I was invited to appear on E!, VH1, and a host of other TV channels to talk about fashion as a representative of the magazine. That led to a regular gig on the Today show, as style correspondent and in-house nutjob. I realized right away the magnitude of this: The thought of me, being in people’s homes first thing in the morning, was mind-boggling. And from the first minute we went on the air, the chemistry between Matt, Katie, and me was palpable. Every time I sat down on the couch with them to do my weekly segment on celebrity fashion, there was crackling energy between us. The banter was so spontaneous: We were all at the top of our game. We never even talked about what we did, or why it worked: it just worked. The mix of the three of us was just right.

In June of 2003, the executives who ran Entertainment Tonight approached me, and offered me a job as a full-time correspondent covering the red carpet and doing big-ticket celebrity interviews. The job would take me front-row center, on the front lines of Hollywood. It was the chance of a lifetime. I felt like my professional life had finally fallen into place.

By June 2004, I was flying from Los Angeles to New York and back again every single week: I’d blab about Chanel ballet flats on the Today couch and maybe hit a Gucci sample sale in SoHo, and 24 hours later, I’d be dishing with Drew at a Beverly Hills fête. Here I was, and I’d finally achieved my dream of being a television star. I had the heady high fashion Hollywood life I’d always fantasized about: I slept on Pratessi sheets and went to the same energy healer as Ashley Olsen.

But lately, I had been wondering how much of a dream my dream life really was. I was living everywhere and nowhere at all, I barely saw my family anymore, and the only salivating heavy breather who was sharing my California king bed was a five and a half-pound Maltese named Stinky. It was all starting to seem like a big price to pay for the honor of being on Nick Lachey’s Top Eight MySpace friend list.

The stress was taking its toll on my body. I’d become a devotee of the Skinny Eastern European Supermodel Diet. I thought food meant drinking a smoothie in the airport or a bag of soy chips consumed while my hair was being blown out in my dressing room, or a flute of complimentary Dom Perignon handed out backstage in the Fashion Week tents. My version of a Hungry Man dinner was a pack of cigarettes, washed down with a six pack of diet soda. I often found myself in a hotel room at midnight asking myself, Did I eat today?

My body, which I’d always thought of as being sturdy and indestructible, was beginning to show the strain. My skin was corpse gray. I had dizzy spells. I was running on empty. I began to ask myself, Is something the matter? I couldn’t help thinking, Maybe something is really wrong here. Look at you. You are skin and bones, and it’s not attractive.

I started thinking that I should see a doctor. But that on its own was an issue. In the decade or so that I’d lived in Los Angeles, I hadn’t seen a doctor once. This medical negligence came despite the fact that I’d always had a nagging health problem: Since my mid-twenties, I’d had elevated blood pressure. But I thought high blood pressure was for old people, and as long as the Sisley moisturizer was keeping the crow’s-feet away, I certainly wasn’t

Reviews for Glamour, Interrupted

[eenerd · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A quick, funny read about a really serious topic. Only someone like Cojo could give us a smarmy, biting, sarcastic, funny, sweet, scary, loving and of course totally fabulous book about kidney disease and its' effect on one family. I didn't expect to, but I really loved this book. There is much more to Steven Cojocaru than great style and an eye for fashion faux pas!